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Renee never really pays much attention to the space between the portals. But oftentimes, she sees things, hears things, in the in-between space. She never really pays close attention to the void, since all she’s focusing on are the entrance and the exit, on how to enter and where to land.
She sees her bouncing reflections, however, and that has always been hard to ignore. She knows they are the voices that speak to her. It is hard at first, but she has learned their voices, and has learned how to ignore, how to normalize them. She travels on the space in-between, and she notes their presence, and thanks them for their guidance, before she leaves. They serve her a purpose, and it has given her an edge.
The standard voices… they’re okay. They’re fine. It is her own voice after all, it’s easy to get used to.
But recently, she hears… someone else.
Some other voices.
At first, she heard other voices in the space between planes, when she jumps through the portal and finds her rightful place back in the universe where she wants to place herself. However, recently she hears other voices calling in the same manner as the usual chorus of her own voice, in her reality, battling for attention with the actual warnings.
It took her by surprise when she was in the middle of a match, and she heard Bangalore speak. It was too soft to be her, and her own voices talked over the new foreign one.
“Did you say something, Bangalore?” Renee asks, her back behind a metal crate, corresponding with Anita a few meters away while she scouts ahead.
Come visit, the voices in her head say. Jump to us.
Anita sounds rightfully confused. “What?”
“Didn’t you say something just now?” Renee asks again. Maybe that’s something else? She prepares her Hemlock just in case.
“Negative,” Bangalore says. It’s followed by several cocking noises from Anita’s Peacekeeper. “I’ve been silent for ten minutes since I’m running back. Didn’t want to alert the bastards.”
“Okay,” is all Renee was able to say about it. “Ignore that, then.” The voices in her head seem relentless, though. There is always the chorus of warnings about present-day dangers, but one stands out.
Jump past the bend, it says. Mobius strip isn’t that complicated.
Having voices in your head warn you of things is strange enough already , Renee thinks, and this voice decides to be the most cryptic of them all.
Her teammate seems to just brush that off as they came close to winning -- they were spread too thin and all three of them got caught off-guard, but Renee still found it strange, and it was hard for her to simply take it as a mistake.
She hears other voices in the next few days, mostly from her fellow legends -- she heard Mirage laughing once, and if she remembers right, she heard Bloodhound’s praying. For some odd reason, once the voices have called once, they never returned. She never heard from the Bangalore in her head again, or the other voices she has heard once they’ve called her through the void.
It would be all right if the voices just come and go, if they were pleasant. Sometimes, they aren’t, and they come at inopportune times, battling for attention over her own voices.
The match that came was going swimmingly, not having to run from the ring and surviving almost every encounter... until she had to go grab a syringe and suddenly she hears a foreign thing, screaming at her ears and bouncing around her head like echoes in a cave, stopping her in her tracks and making her keel over.
Lifeline must have heard her writhing in pain, because later on the skirmisher hears a beep in her radio. “Wraith? You okay?”
“Did you… hear that?” Renee asks, trying to scramble for the syringe she just dropped.
Something in her voice must have sounded strange, since Lifeline sounded concerned over the voice feed. “Been radio silent for a while now.” Wraith hears a beep. “Crypto?”
“Distant gunshots,” he says, sounding occupied. “What did you hear?”
“... Screaming.”
“I didn’t hear anything, then.”
After she got back into her senses and managed to actually jab the syringe into her, the topic was pushed aside (after Lifeline made triple sure she was all right) before they moved on the game. They managed to narrowly win once more, before getting smacked on the face by the enemy and losing.
Upon getting back to the ship, Wraith prays that did the trick, and maybe she won’t have to hear other people’s voices other than her own again.
Not really, a voice in her chimes. Just jump over if you hate cryptic clues.
“Where the fuck should I go then?” she asks the void within her.
Just go in, the voice responds. You’ll know.
However, when she braced for more other foreign voices, nothing else came, even as she did personal errands the next day to try to ignore it all. She waited and braced for repeat instances, that maybe she will hear the other legends again, or maybe she hears someone new.
Nothing much comes. Renee is not sure if that’s a good sign. A part of her wishes for someone new to call over, so maybe she gets a new clue on what’s going on, or where to go, if it’s even a place.
But nothing.
Disappointment may be the right word for it. After arriving back at the base, she plops down on one of the common area’s sofas, tired out of her mind, trying to breathe her stress out of her lungs. Maybe she should just wait for everyone’s turn and get over it--
Something cold pressed against her hand. Renee looks up to find Natalie offering her a drink, which she drinks without question almost immediately. It’s really good, the voice in her warns. They’re right, it’s some damn good lemonade.
“What’s bothering you, mon amour ?” Natalie sits on the sofa across from her, looking concerned. Renee noticed that she’s carrying several books and several packages of things with her, as well as a similar drink in her other hand that she’s ignored in favor of her.
“Ugh, not much,” Renee says. “It might have just been me.”
“I’m fairly sure it isn’t.” Natalie reassures her, smiling softly. “Do you mind sharing?”
She should know this, a voice suggests. She is to be trusted.
“... It’s the voices,” Renee says, unsure on what details to explain and what to leave out. “I heard something…new? Something… foreign.”
“Oh, I see.” Natalie seems well-aware of how things work, and it’s amazing how much she deduced from just watching her fight and what little vague things the engineer knew beforehand, but it’s evident that the engineer is figuring some things out. “Do you usually get that? Is that new?”
“I hear the new voices before, in the in-between spaces in portals,” the skirmisher explains. “But… they’re now fighting for attention with the other voices. In the last match, I heard… screaming? But it.. wasn’t me, and it was over all of the other voices… then the next few days have just been silent.”
“Hmm.” Natalie hums, deep in thought. “Can you ask the voices maybe?”
“Oh, uh…” Renee pauses. She’s not really sure what or how to ask, but she supposes a second (or third) try won’t hurt. “I can try again.”
“Well, I guess you can enjoy the silence while it lasts, ma belle . I can stay here with you while you… discuss?”
The books on Natalie’s lap catches her attention again. “Aren’t you… aren’t you busy?”
“It’s okay. I only have reading to do tonight.” The smile Natalie shows is saccharine. “I can stay if you want company.”
And Natalie proceeds to settle herself on the sofa, putting her books and materials beside her, busying herself with work. For a few moments, all Renee could do was watch, eyes following strands of blonde hair, and admiring freckles over flushed cheeks as Natalie was too engrossed with her reading material to notice her sole audience.
It's strange, considering how Natalie is with her. Renee is sure of her own feelings towards the engineer, but Natalie's friendliness can be said the same to her treatment to everyone in the games, so she hasn't really tried to pursue or question it further, being rather content with their odd friendship and watching the engineer work. She's satisfied with Natalie seeking her out for friend things, or being her teammate at most matches, or settling in late night odd silences where they just hang around and do their own thing.
That's what friends do, right?
If she could, and if the time is right, maybe Natalie should know. But the right time seems to be taking a while.
Now.
She is content with watching. Listening. Seeing her be happy.
Now. Stop it. Say it. Listen.
Natalie surely deserves someone better than some woman who has a crowd screaming at her head. If she finds someone, all of her would be cheering.
Listen .
The skirmisher manages to pry her eyes off, and close her eyes, doing her best to focus on her call to the void within her.
“Answer me. What are you doing?”
No answer.
“Are you calling me?”
Nothing.
“Why?”
Nothing.
At least, at first.
A soft voice responds.
It wasn’t hers.
Whispering. Soft whispering, close to her, as if cuddled beside her.
Renee hears Natalie whispering, so close to her ears it felt like she was there with her, feeling the warmth of her breathing, but yet her voice was easy to miss in its resemblance to pillow talk.
Eyes dart open, and Renee turns to Natalie across her. She’s still busy with reading her books and tinkering with metals, and is humming a tune.
The humming is from her, then. But the whispering… the voices seem to whisper directly into her ear, so delicate that she could almost feel the wind behind them tickle her ear. The whispering becomes more coherent, and it seems that the Natalie in her head is talking about… metals?
Renee takes a sip of the drink offered to her earlier, and goes back to staring at the engineer across her, imagining her reading the educational book to her like one of those audio files.
It's… it's nice , Renee finds herself thinking. This is nice.
She doesn't notice half an hour pass as she listens to the engineer talk in her head about metal conductivity, and while it wasn't bothersome, it's weird to see Natalie in front of her stay silent and do her own thing while Natalie in her head is having a podcast about material science. She was lucky that this was downtime, and there's no imminent danger to warn her on when she's in her secluded corner in the ship, since the voices seem to stay silent when Natalie in her head is talking.
The engineer suddenly stops and laughs. Why do you want to learn this, anyway? she hears the Natalie in her head ask. If anything breaks, I can fix it for you, you know.
I like listening to you.
That's… did the voice in her head just answer?
Even the Natalie in her head seems taken back, but most likely of a different reason. Well, I'm glad I make you happy, ma chérie, the head Natalie says.
I’m glad you know that I’ll listen to you read a phonebook if it comes to it, her voice responds.
“Am I imagining this?”
"Hm?" Natalie looks up from her book. Shit, Renee thinks, I said that out loud didn't I?
"I… uh." Renee wants to crawl into a portal and never leave, and decides to divert the topic. "What are you reading?"
Natalie pauses as she closes the book and looks at the cover. "Principles of Electrical Engineering Materials and Devices," the engineer reads out loud. "Metals, conductive materials, things like that. I got offered to teach on my free time off the Games, so I'm reviewing."
"… metals?"
"Yeah."
Isn't Natalie in her head talking about…
Oh.
Suddenly everything clicks.
The Renee in her head speaks up. Do you know now?
Renee has an idea, at the very least.
As Renee peers into the portal, she sees herself. At least, she thinks it's her. Glassy eyes seem to beckon her further in the dark pit, and as she puts her hand in, she realizes she’s not entirely sure what she’s looking for. A future? A different timeline? An alternate reality?
She’s jumped through time before. It’s not exactly new. But for a different part of her to call her, into a specific plane of reality--
A knock disturbs her from her trail of thought. Who wants her this late at night? She takes a while before she comes close to the door to open it, and Natalie peeks through, in plain sleepwear and looking curious, carrying snacks as well as a notepad with her. She merely stares at Wraith and the portal behind her for a few seconds before she speaks.
"Are… are you busy?" She looks further into the room and Renee offers no resistance as the engineer lightly pushes the door open to see the portal in full view.
The voices chime in. Tell her!
"I… I wanted to check something.” is the excuse Renee manages to blurt out.
"Ah, the voices… right?"
"Yeah. The voices. Just…. I thought I'd check what's happening. I have a theory where it's coming from."
"An experiment! Exciting! I'm glad some of the voices were helpful."
"Actually…" Renee pauses, before just thinking that she would tell her eventually, anyway. "It was you. I… heard you."
"What did I say, mon amour ?" She pauses, waiting for an answer, before it sinks in entirely. "Oh! I see! So that's why you were looking at me earlier. I thought there's something on my face."
She’s not wrong.
"Ahaha, yeah..."
"How long will that take you? Will you be back quickly?"
"... I will try to be swift. Do you have anything in mind?”
"Well, I was going to offer some theories about the voices,” Natalie says, “but it seems your lead is better than mine.”
For one reason or another, that made Renee feel warm inside. Maybe because it wasn’t really Natalie’s expertise, but it still spurred her to offer her thoughts to help. Or maybe the thought that Natalie was actually listening.
Still, like Renee in her head, she loves listening to the engineer speak passionately about things, and even if Natalie’s theories were off-base, it won’t hurt to look into. “We can check it when I come back, depending on how things go,” Renee says.
“I’d love to.” Natalie smiles, eyes sparkling. “Can you tell me what you find when you come back, mon ange ?”
It’s okay. It’s all right.
Renee smiles. “Sure thing.”
The skirmisher steps through the void, and she sees the strip of the universe beneath her feet. As she walks past, she sees the usual reflections of herself bouncing around the walls like mirrors on all sides, but paying closer attention, she sees how they differ in the slightest.
She’s not entirely sure what she’s looking for. The voice mentions a mobius strip, but maybe the void is too vast for her to see what they meant. She merely looks for a clue of tampering, a rip, a tear, any sign that their Wraith is experimenting, as she walks forward the void.
Eventually, Renee sees where she’s going, through a slight shift of the path and eventually walking upwards and upside down, and seeing the slight rip on the darkness. She peeks through, and while she wasn’t able to see clearly at first, her room in the other plane comes to view like it’s through tinted glass panes. Reaching out, she grabs the portal’s edge and pushes herself forward and through the pane, the air in her lungs feeling like it’s being pushed out and shoved back in. She reels on the change, and she breathes and pants for a few moments with parts of her body still in the void.
Someone clears her throat. Renee turns to where it came from.
“Hi.”
The Wraith in front of her is… a little livelier than she remembers herself being. Her hair is down and looking slightly neat, but she does see through the haphazardly-applied concealer applied on the dark circles around her eyes, and several white patches litter the exposed skin peeking at the edge of her shirt and sweatpants.
There wasn't really anything vastly new about this part of the mobius strip, but she can tell some minute details are slightly off just by looking around the room -- pieces of her armor that requires fixing are on her table, taken apart and sure enough, the several textbooks are sitting right beside it, dog-eared on pages and several post it notes sticking out from between the pages.
The Wraith in front of her moves in front of the table, blocking Renee's view and demanding her full attention.
“You… you called me?”
“Yes,” the Wraith says. “Tried something out. An experiment, if you’re using science terms.”
"Science terms," Renee mulls it over for a while. "now that's new."
"We are not that dumb, Renee.” A rare smirk flashes upon this Wraith’s face. "We can have a little science, since the world seems hell-bent on not giving us answers. We will look for it ourselves."
Renee fully steps out of the portal, letting it close behind her. She guesses that it would be rather easy to find her way back once her portal recharges. "How did you figure this out, anyway?"
"Mm, I don't know. An educated guess?" This Wraith beckons her to sit on the bed with her, and Renee gladly did. "Void jumping makes me see the mobius strip we're in, and I keep seeing you on the strip's bend, so I thought it would be a good experiment to try to reach out."
“A mobius strip…?”
“It’s a guess. It’s too complicated for me for now, but that’s why we study.” This Wraith shoots a passing glance on the books on her table before looking back at her guest. “But I guess since you made your way here, it’s easy to keep contact.”
Renee quirks an eyebrow. "Is that how it is now?"
"Depends on how it goes once you leave. But that is my theory, a concept I want to share. I think we can… guide each other on matters outside of immediate danger."
That’s an interesting concept, Renee thinks. To befriend and establish links with specific versions of herself, and to seek guidance and insight on events or situations that may have occurred to some other version of herself. The comfort creeps into her heart, and it feels almost too foreign, but she welcomes it.
“But what were the voices I was hearing, then?”
“I was trying out how to reach you.” This Wraith looks a little sheepish with that reasoning. “My voice doesn’t work out, so I suppose I let you hear the voices I’m hearing. Cracked the void a bit to let you take a peek, so to speak.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I don’t know if I can fix that, but I will try,” this Wraith says, laughing. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Well, I’m here, so you can say it did.” Renee is a little curious now. “Do you speak the same as the other voices?”
“Yes,” this Wraith says. “But I think it will be easy to determine who is speaking. Studying all this took a while, but I thought to share this information with you, maybe get you started on things.”
"I never thought to study for myself. I have to say, this is... new."
"Hah, blame Natalie on that.” This Wraith’s eye twinkles as she mentions the engineer, and she could immediately tell they both have the same thoughts about Natalie. “She's an engineer, and her interest in learning new things is… admirable. Welcome, even. She listens to me. You can say she pushed me to poke around the void and experiment."
"Natalie…" Just the thought of the engineer makes her feel soft inside. "How are… things with her here?"
“Well, she knows.” This Wraith is embarrassed beyond belief, but she sees the red flush of her cheeks, so Renee assumes it’s a good thing. “She took it really well. Sometimes I think she may have made a mistake, but… I guess I also called you here for that.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I hear you through the void too, you know that right? Just tell her. I know we’re on the same page here. Do yourself a favor and tell her. I promise you, she will be honest with you.”
“I don’t see the reason why you called for--”
“Hello! Can I come in?” It’s followed by several knocks on the door. Renee wasn’t sure but she’s pretty certain that they're this plane’s Natalie.
This Wraith looks at Renee like she’s unsure about it. “I have a visitor,” she calls out.
“Oh! That visitor?” The engineer seems to immediately know what that means, and her excitement is evident with her tone. “Now I’m curious! I want to come in!”
“Sure thing.”
The door opens slowly, and this plane’s Wattson comes into the room, wearing a pastel orange hoodie and looking slightly different. Her hair was slightly longer than she remembers and is also in a wild braided mess, and almost every strand is giving in to static.
Also, she looked like she's about to jump in joy at the sight of them two. She almost throws herself to them both, before she could stop herself and resorts to just walking slowly in amazement.
"It worked! It worked! Oh, that's so great, ma chérie, this is so bizarre…" Wattson seems unsure on which Wraith to look at for a minute, looking both amazed and… flustered? She decided to turn to the visitor. "You know me, right? Wattson, your fellow legend?"
Renee manages a smile. "Yes, and you look…" Different? Lively? Marvelous? "You look as pretty as I remember you."
You are very eloquent , a Renee in her chimes, and she picks up the sarcasm immediately. Wattson seems too excited and flattered at different measures, and she has somehow found her way into holding her hand and excitedly shaking it.
"Wraith said she was going to try to call out to the portal, maybe someone would answer… It's so wonderful that it worked!” Seeing her smile warms Renee up, and even as Wattson proceeded to ask her several questions about her side of the strip and how things are, she’s content sitting here with herself and her crush in another universe, discussing theories about physics and dimension hopping. Renee decides that staying longer seems okay to do, if it means she can learn and grasp more of their curiosity and bring it back to her side of the strip.
This Wattson has brought her a drink, lemon tea in a ceramic cup, which she tends over as they discuss the differences between their sides of the strip. They've all decided to leave the rip as it is, as repairing it may destroy their link, but if ever the other foreign voices peeking through return, they may attempt to mend the rip.
It’s strange how… okay Renee feels. When she saw a different version of herself before, it was under dire circumstances, and now that she’s found time to try to connect with other versions of her in the strip, she realizes that maybe her own plane shouldn’t be that bad. Maybe she should also study as much as the other Renee did.
Maybe she can hear Natalie's theories. They’re theories, after all, they could be wrong, they might have a lead. But discovering the intricacies of who she is with the engineer is a thought so good it almost feels criminal, almost too good to be true.
But she couldn’t wait to take herself into her own hands, and actually learn who she is. Not needing to demand answers from people who don't want to give it.
Eventually, Renee’s tea has long since run out, and her bracer beeps, signaling that the portal has charged. The noise broke this Wraith and Wattson out of their muted conversations, and they both turned to check the time.
“Oh, it’s pretty late.” Wattson looked rather disappointed. “I can’t believe it’s been hours.”
Renee looks at the time. It’s… oh. It’s an hour or so past midnight. Have they been discussing that long?
All three of them seemed to agree that staying too long doesn’t seem like a good idea, so Renee immediately set on to prepare the portal. Preparing to leave was a silent process. As she fnally set up the portal and got it running, she merely gets a shake of the hand and a dumb grin on her face from the other Wraith, most likely for her to remember what to do when she gets back.
She is honest. Renee is not sure who that refers to. But she believes it.
This Wattson, however, chooses to embrace her fully. She lingers for so long that Renee smells her citrus-scented conditioner from the crook of her neck where she found herself settling. Has Natalie always smelled that good? As they part from the hug, Renee finds herself thinking of testing that out once she gets back on her side of the mobius strip.
“We’ll see each other again, you know,” this Wraith says. She doesn’t look like she’s too thrilled for Renee to leave, but she knew that being separated is impossible. “Don’t make it seem like this is the last time.”
Renee steps her feet into the void before looking back. “You sure about that?”
“Yeah, don’t worry.” Wraith, for once in her life, looks exceedingly confident about it. “It’s alright. You’ll hear from me.”
When Renee returns to her rightful place on the mobius strip, Natalie was waiting. Something in the skirmisher knew that the engineer is accustomed to staying up late, but as she watches her in her notepad taking notes and reviewing textbooks like a college student would, she figured that it’s justifiable.
Still, the other Wraith knew something, and she wanted to share it with the engineer as she had promised.
Natalie stood up from her seat. “Welcome back,” the engineer says, excitement spilling at her voice. “How did it go?”
As if on cue, Renee’s stomach grumbles.
The laughter that follows from Natalie feels cathartic. “Yeah, I’m a little hungry too. Want me to reheat you some food?”
Natalie brought her book and notepad with her to the kitchen, and promptly set it aside as she takes out containers of leftover pasta and starting up a pan to reheat it. The engineer seems to be a pretty decent multitasker, still somehow able to listen well to Renee’s story while keeping an eye on the food. After a few minutes, she divides the food between them on bowls and gets forks for them both.
As they sat down with pasta in hand and absolutely no distance between them, Renee finds comfort in the setup, just curled up on a sofa talking about science and findings while they eat a midnight snack. She doesn’t even know how they ended up that close, but the engineer is warm, and she hears her voices seem to agree.
It’s okay. It’s all right.
She’s only told the engineer a skimmed down version of the story, on how she saw the mobius strip, and how things were slightly different on where she went. She told Natalie how she saw the other version of her.
Renee leaves out the other Wraith’s advice to her. That’s between the both of them. That’s only between Wraiths of every universe.
It’s okay. We’ll be okay. You will be okay.
After they’re both done with their meals, Renee dashes to the sink and washes their dirty dishes in thirty seconds before running back to where she was, cuddling against the engineer who has returned to her books and seems rather content on where she is. Natalie has picked up something else, a book about power system analysis she’s reading like a novel, and leaning against Renee’s shoulder as if her presence grounds her into learning more.
Renee’s heart feels like it’s swelling to the maximum when she sees the peace. The comfort of the night, how easily it was for Natalie to just welcome her upon jumping between dimensional planes within a few hours. How seriously she took the foreign voices. How she’s leaning in, learning, absorbing the silence.
For a few moments, Renee wishes it would last longer. Forever, even.
She decides taking the first step would be all right.
She wraps an arm around Natalie, pulling her closer as the engineer reads. Natalie does not seem to mind as she scooted closer against her, eventually leaning her head on her shoulder like a pillow. The engineer sighs, turns to her, and smiles before she casually returns to her readings and notes.
It’s okay. It will be okay.
“Natalie?”
“Hm?”
“Thank you,” Renee says, barely heard but audible enough for Natalie to hear. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
“Anything for you, Renee.”